Ha!! It IS official!!!!! I weigh under 170lbs. Weigh-in this morning was <drum-roll, please> ta-da, 167lbs!!!!! Do you realize just last month, I weighed 179LBS?? I am riding strong every day, with limited carbs, thank you! This feels really good.
Ok, excitement out of the way, time to curl up with a good blog & enjoy some whine. AAAAHHHHGGGGG, I don’t want to be fat any more! I am tired. It is hot. I want to be able to ride my bike in a tank top. I want to wear a sundress. Do you have any idea how long it has been since I wore a sundress?? I want to drive in my car in a sleeveless shirt & not be sweating like crazy every time I go somewhere. Right now, I don’t do sleeveless. I want to wear all my pretty clothes. I am so tired of being frumpy.
I’d like to walk thru a busy store & know I no longer am ‘the fat blonde, in the black shirt’. I wear black most of the time, or some other dark color. I wouldn’t be caught dead in say, a yellow? I want to wear colors… and white. White is just not a color that works on me right now- I never knew this. When you’re thin & tan, white is an amazing color. When you’re thin, all colors are amazing.
Remember last week when I spoke about the massage thing? Well, I never went. Because I feel so gross. I don’t want anybody rubbing their hands all over my fatness, eww. I mean, what do I do? Go in with a list: these are all the places that you better not touch me, got it??? Oh, yeah, that would make for a pleasant, relaxing day. Not. I have a $200 gift card from the Watermark downtown. I can’t bring myself to use it. Can’t bring myself to go in there as ‘a fat woman’. I don’t want to gross out the poor masseuse. Now that I am making some progress, I will save it as a reward. I’m thinking maybe at 160lbs? That will be something to work towards.
I want to feel normal. Fat is not normal. And for anyone reading, thinking, hey- what’s with that, I’ve been overweight a long time, who does she think SHE is. With all the love & understanding I can send to you, being overweight isn’t normal. There is a difference between being a healthy weight & fitting into a size zero jeans. It is important to be at a healthy weight. I want to feel good about going out at night to listen to live music. I love doing that. We used to go out all the time. We don’t go anymore. I don’t do out as a fat woman. It’s just not any fun.
Oh, yeah, and the big one. I don’t wanna have fat sex anymore. Fat sex is no substitute for good sex. Sorry, Guy, it’s just not. You have been so good & understanding with this, but I hate it. I want to feel happy about being naked around my husband. Around myself, for that matter. (I don’t even do sleeveless when I’m at the house by myself.) We don’t do naked at our house. There always has to be something, a tee, gown, sheet, ya know? (I know, I know, WAY too much info, sorry) Feeling good about little things, like leaving the lights on. Wearing cute things, Guy would so love that. Did love that. I don’t think they sell lingerie in plus sizes. And if they do, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to wear lingerie in plus sizes. I could go on, but you get my point I’m sure.
Ok, I’m done whining. On to what I really wanted to talk about. Excuses. What I am finding out is that just about everyone has this little basket where they keep all their excuses for stuff they should do, but don’t do. Some of us have these ginormous suitcases, too. We take it with us every where we go. As if it would die if we left it unattended for just a moment. (we probably should leave it somewhere, but where??) Your excuse basket has been with you for so long, it’s like an extention of your arm, it’s a part of you. You probably can’t even see yours. I can’t see mine, but I know it’s there.
That is one of the problems with the excuse basket. We aren’t able to see it. We think, logically of couse, that there are really good reasons why we don’t do the things we should. A high protein diet? Sorry, can’t do it. I need some carbs. I can’t give up bread. It’s just a little, it won’t hurt. Exercise? Oh, I’d love to, but I don’t have any time. I have other people to do for, take care of. Write that book? Take that class? Spend time on just me? Go do the one thing in life that will really make me happy? We have a carefully crafted excu- no, I mean reason, for everything we don’t do but should.
We all have different words we use. But not different excuses. They really are all about the same. Check it out. Talk to someone this week about something in their life that they are not doing, but should be. Listen to what comes back at you. Excuse. I am one of the worst. I am so good at rationalizing my excuses. Heck, I can convince just about anyone. So strongly convinced myself- look what happened.
Remember when I said before that I didn’t get fat overnight? That is true. There was a point, when my weight jumped up to 150lbs, that I could have done something. Straight-away. I should have looked at what was causing me to eat ice cream every day with Guy. I was feeling overwhelmed by our new relationship. And I have to be the one that is always on top of things, I can handle everything. I’m the go-to person. The fixer. Nothing’s wrong. I’m not scared. My feelings are in check, just bring me home some Hagen-das, would you.
Like I said before, excuses are insidious. They slither in, we don’t even see them. Like Satan tempting Eve in the garden. We all believe the reasons are valid. But you know what? If you are unhealthy, if you are unhappy, if you are unfufilled, something ain’t right. It’s hard to fix it, because, like I said, we can’t see our own basket. And all the people around us? They’re too polite. They mean well, but it would be helpful, if they just gave it to you straight sometimes.
Let me show you what I mean. In April, I admitted I am fat. Everyone I talk to disagrees – Oh, no, not you, your not fat. etc. Once I delt with all the polite naysayers, what happened? Nothing. The world didn’t come crashing down around me, the planets didn’t realign with the sun, causing an immediate solar melt down, ending life as we know it. No, nothing bad happened. And armed with the truth, I was able to find what is really needed to get my weight to a healthy place. I became ENPOWERED. And every day, that is where I live. Do you know what this gives me? Well, all those things that I whine about will be gone. I will live a healthier & happier life, probably a longer life. That is an incredible thing.
You know, like Dr. Phil said a long time ago: “How’s that working for you“? Apply that statement to everything in your life. I’ve been doing alot of thinking about my excuses lately. And I think that’s making it easier to see them. I’ve caught myself, during a beginner bike ride, explaining my really good reason for not riding every day. Well, I gotta work, ya know. So, work and ride. Schedule your time better so you can do both. If we all looked at our schedules, & I mean reallylooked at our schedules, we would find alot of time that we are wasting.
Removing cable from my house was so freeing. As much as I enjoyed it, Law & Order never added anything to my day. CSI may improve the quality of life for the actors on the show, but it does nothing to my quality of life. I get so much more done now. And I think alot better, too. You’ve all seen me. Hey, I’m keeping 20 plates spinning all the time. It wasn’t like that when I had cable. Isn’t there like 972 channels now? Go, get up, get outside, breath, go do something fun. Figure out what you want to do and do it now. We ain’t gonna be here forever.
We also need to understand, we can’t conquer excuses on our own. You can’t battle something you can’t see. Find someone that loves you enough to tell you every time you offer up excuses and get off track. If you’ve got them, use your kids. They are the absolute best at cutting straight through your BS and being brutily honest. I don’t know if they are better at seeing black & white, or if they’re just eager to get you back for all that discipline you gave them. But either way, they’re the best. I don’t know, if you don’t have any kids, maybe you can borrow a friend’s or something.
You sound like a different person. I’m happy to hear of this successful step along your journey. I have recently broken through one of own many weight plateaus along my way. I’ve lost 44 lbs since November, and I have another 42 pounds to go. My apologies for being so harsh in my last comment. In my life I have known a few people who were slim most of their life and in the course of a few short years became fat. I have always struggled with my weight. And hearing the newly fat persons, “sorry, I never knew how hard it was.” I can’t tell you how many times I have tried different methods of eating, miles walked and bicycled, counting the calories burned, lots of water. It is a shock to the logical mind. How can one ride 40 miles a day, eat 1200 calories walk 5 miles a day and 3 days later weigh more? Of coarse I know I was doing something wrong, that I just have to keep at it and change and experiment. A few more of the right calories, less of the wrong ones. Maybe I’m excercising too much. Adjust here and there to find the right stuff. All the while my slim friend “knowing” I’m not really trying. And then once their body changes usually they end up fatter than me, and now they “understand.” Once again, sorry I took it out on you. I know that really I’m lucky, so many others have a much harder road than mine. Reading these posts help me keep on track with my juorney. And now like Ciciphus I keep pushing that stone up the hill. It is a labor of love though.
Congratulation on your wonderful accomplishment!! That shows some true dedication and focus to lose 44 lbs. You must feel really great about that.
No worries, you didn’t sound harsh. I think I understand what those newly fat friends might have meant by their comments. I’m finding it very hard to lose weight, but the surprise comes from all the lies & misinformation shoveled at us as fact. From people we used to believe were people whos opinions we should seek; doctors. (I always just assumed the information was correct, so if people were still overweight, they couldn’t be really trying. Now I see that we are pushing large rocks up hills repetitively because we’re being lied to.)
I’m starting to gain some insight on this. If our metabolism is continually adjusting based on the ‘type’ of food we eat, then being fat isn’t about laziness. It becomes a metabolism problem, which means our doctor needs to run tests that give us real information about the malfunction so that we can make sure to eat the right food to properly regulate our metabolism.
Sounds easy, but it’s not. I am finding that most GP’s & family doctors are clueless about metabolism. What is interesting is they act like they know. Rather than admitting they don’t have the right answer, (and if you are exercising 3-4 times a week 45 minutes each time, restricting what you eat in a reasonable way, you ’should be’ losing weight) and sending you to someone who can find the right answer, they just take your money, feed you some BS, tell you you’re not trying hard enough & boot you out of their office.
And nobody is talking about this. That blows my mind.
If I took my car to have the engine analysed, The mechanic wouldn’t come back to me and say: ‘damnedest thing, I ran all the tests, they check out ok, don’t know why the engine keeps overheating, but just drive it with the heater on. And by the way, that’ll be $179′.
We’d think he was a full blown idiot. But when the mighty DR, (but the way- MD doesn’t stand for Minor Diety) sends you off with no conclusive diagnosis, it’s just because your a lazy fat a**, not because his diagnosis was inconclusive.
And instead of overweight people becoming outraged at poor medical care, they beat themselves up and start ‘Fat Acceptance Support Groups’. I don’t understand this. Where are are human shields when we really need them, here in the US.
And the media, why don’t they report about this instead of treating hype diet infomercials as factual news. Again, I’m confused and blown away.
I’m curious what other people’s experience has been with their doctors. Mine gave me enough misinformation that I’m having to find another one. I’m going to an internist this time. & will demand to see an endocrinologist if I have to. And I could rant about that for hours, but I’ll save you the grief.
In the meanwhile, keep up the good work. I will pray for you to meet your goals. You can do it!!! All the best to you…
V.